Behind the crime scene

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Hiten Tejwani in Savdhaan India

Which stories do you love the most? Love stories? Fantasy? Mythology? Spy thrillers? Horror? Raunchy stuff? Science fiction? Historical sagas? I read some of these, but I don’t go seeking them.

The stories I hunt out and then devour with evil relish are the ones based on real-life crime. Nothing fascinates me more than the twisted minds of humans, the stubborn compulsion of cops and forensic teams to find out the truth, if not for justice but their own egoistic satisfaction, the drama that plays out in courts and the judge who eventually sifts rhetoric and emotions from facts and hard evidence.
What’s even more fascinating about crime stories is that often we never figure out the truth. The accused get sentenced, victims' families find closure, but huge questions remain.
And these days the Aarushi case is busting my brain cells. That 14-year-old lovely, smiling girl seems forgotten in the court drama as the CBI pulls the judge in one direction and the defense in the other. Could her parents have killed her? Why? Was it an accident? Or is the CBI basing their accusation on their inability to figure out who entered and left the house? Since they don’t know who, it must be the parents — is that their theory?
I was going mental with all these conflicting details and needed some clear-cut crime stories to improve my mood, so I turned to Savdhaan India — 100 days, 100 Fight backs (Life OK).
This is an interesting show that tells a hundred crime stories which resulted in tectonic shifts — cases that brought about significant changes in the law, in crime prevention, policing, mindsets etc.
I watched three episodes — the first one was about India’s last jury trial. Though names and other details for most cases have been changed, this episode was about the 1959 case of Kawas Manekshaw Nanavati who murdered his friend and wife’s lover, Prem Ahuja, in Mumbai. Sylvia Nanavati was beautiful and Kawas was a handsome naval commander who had shot and killed and then surrendered. The jury declared Nanavati “not guilty”, with an 8-1 verdict. That was the end of the jury system in India.
Next on Savdhaan India was a moving story of a mother looking for her lost child. “Laparvah Aspatal versus Surekha” was set in a hospital which was not as much into treating patients as it was into fleecing them. Surekha and her security guard husband’s newborn boy got stolen from Laparvah Aspatal, but the couple, despite their poverty and disempowerment, fought a relentless battle to get justice. The judge, in his final ruling, said, “Aap ke hospital se delivery ke liye train ka toilet behtar hai,” and ordered that henceforth all hospitals must have CCTV cameras, guards, etc. Then there was the story of a young girl, Reshma, whose father sold her to a kotha. But Reshma ended up changing the lives of all the women working there and, eventually, won local elections.
The show has inspiring stories and uses new, interesting actors we don’t see much on television. Though most are told in a rondu style with corny dialogue, what’s really nice are the sutradhars who keep arriving to tell us how each case brought about badlav. That the sutradhars I met were Sushant Singh and Hiten Tejwani made me very happy.